Creating a relaxed environment will greatly benefit babies and toddlers while eating, allowing them to get used to new food and help them get the nourishment they require, paediatric dietician Jenny Douglas says
She talks to Nine to Noon about how to best nourish infants and young children.
Douglas runs her own private practice, Jump Start Nutrition in Dunedin.
Photo: Jenny Douglas
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She specialises in infant feeding, food allergies and intolerance, fussy eating and gut health. She has contributed to Nadia Lim's new book Yum, which focuses of recipes and nutrition for the whole family.
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There has been much talk recently about introducing vegetables instead of fruit in the transition from milk to solid foods.
Douglas says this makes sense, as the infant is already familiar with sweet flavours from the breast milk, and getting the child used to other flavours is beneficial in the long run.
"Some of those are what we have in vegetables. So, introducing vegetables first can be a really good way of introducing savoury and bitter flavours.”
Introducing iron in foods, such as meats, chicken, lentils is important too
There are two approaches when doing so, namely puree the food, or go with the bady-led method, with hand-held foods.Starch vegetables work well, like sweet potatoes and carrots, and bitter flavoured soft vegetable like broccolis. Spinach is a great source of iron that can be blended to puree.
Finger foods are also important for texture for babies as it forms part of speech development, as they learn to chew foods well.
“They use their muscles in their mouth, which is really important for speech later on, which we need kind of make sure that they’re at least chewing on chopped-up family foods by that 10-12 months age, because it means they’re developing those chewing and biting skills.”
Six months is the recommended point of considering solids, but all babies develop at different rates, she says.
Parents don't want to introduce solids before four months because the gut is too immature to cope with solids.
“From four months you’re looking at the developmental signs, which would be that they’re able to sit with less support. That they have good head control, that they’re grabbing foods and bringing them to their mouth, that they have an interest in food and showing signs of chewing and biting and not pushing out all the food.”
Ideally, she says parents should be introducing solids at seven-month mark, because the iron stores given in pregnancy are starting to run out, and breast milk or formula milk is unable to meet iron requirement.
“It is challenging to meet iron requirements. If we put it into perspective, an eight-month-old, it needs about eight milligrams of iron, which is as much or a little bit more than their dad," she says.
“How we need to think about introducing iron is think about those iron foods - that’s meat, fish, chicken, fortified cereals. But we also need to think about the texture they are willing to accept. So, things like mince dishes and slow-cooker meals and meats, are often more acceptable.”
She recommends offering iron in at least a couple of meals during the day. Putting iron-fortified cereals into baking works well, particularly for vegan families.
Vegan diets are tricky and pose a challenge, but its not impossible to work with if some extra planning to done and if fortified foods are used. But the necessary levels of iron and vitamins like B12, and Omega 3, usually require supplementation.
Vegetarian diets are easier to achieve balanced food requirements for babies, with eggs and dairy food helping to give them what they need.
Allergies are more common, posing another challenge to parents.
“Allergies are increasing in this generation, about 10 percent of under 1-year-olds have a diagnosed food allergy," she says.
"The types of foods that we commonly see allergies are with milk, soya, egg, wheat, fish, nuts, sesame and sea food. You can ultimately be allergic to any food and we are seeing a slight increase in kiwifruit and coconut allergy in New Zealand.”
A way to avoid or minimise the risk of allergies is to introduce these types of food early – from six months and before 12 months, once or twice per week, she says.
Breast feeding also helps lower the risk, while exposing the child to the diversity in terms of natural environment helps. Not using antibiotics if these can be avoided, as well as avoiding antibacterial cleaning sprays, also gives parents the best chance of steering their child away from allergic reactions.
For those children a little older, from about 2 years old, many enter a fussy eater stage, which is a normal developmental part of growing up. It is part of neophobic, fear of new things, that helps their survival, so they aren't eating everything they place their hands on," Douglas says.
Parents should think of why they’re being fussy, whether they've had previous reflux, or if their high seat is working. Exposure to foods, being given choices, and being offered foods in lots of different ways helps the child eat. Above all, eating in a relaxed environment is benefit the child's eating habits.
“On a plate, think of putting one or two new foods alongside one or two familiar foods.”
She says the responsibility as a parent is to offer them an opportunity to eat, not to make them eat it.